


Broken Mirrors

by PhantomDreamshade



Category: Little Nightmares (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Parallel Universes, Vague and Creepy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 10:31:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14186961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhantomDreamshade/pseuds/PhantomDreamshade
Summary: The Maw. A place of darkness and decay, owned by the blackest of hearts. Here, something once innocent is corrupted by shadows and nightmares. The Maw devours all....The Haven. A place of light and healing, owned by the brightest of souls. Here, something dark and evil is brought back to the light. The Haven saves all....The Maw has always possessed the touch of the Lady's dark magic, and its broken mirrors hide a secret. What world lies beyond the shattered glass, and can it bring a different ending than the gloomy destiny that awaits Six?





	Broken Mirrors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The journey begins.  
> .snigeb yenruoj ehT

The folded clothes Six slept on were damp and smelled of mildew; nothing stayed dry when exposed to the wet sea air for long. She considered closing the suitcase the night before, but decided against it for fear that it wouldn’t open again. She could handle a little cold and damp.

Six stood up slowly and let the dew roll off of her raincoat as she pulled it tighter around her shoulders, shivering from the chill as well as a restless night. Her dreams were haunted by the same porcelain mask, every time without fail. How long had it been since she escaped - a year? A month? An hour? She didn’t really know.

What Six did know was that she was starting to feel hungry. Her thin frame had never been needy, so if it was telling her it required food, it was probably a good idea to find some. She flicked on her lighter to chase the chill from her numb fingers and walked away into the darkness, the cold of the iron beneath her feet piercing her bare skin to gnaw at her bones.

Six tried to remember why she was crawling through the vents of the Maw instead of sitting in her father’s oversized reading chair in the living room. She had been taken, she knew, but the reason escaped her. The only thing that came to mind was a porcelain mask, telling a stranger to take her away. She put it out of her mind - what she needed right now was food, not another nightmare.

The world outside her little hideaway was far less dry. Frigid, salty spray seeped through the gaps in the iron walls and iron floors, lapping at Six’s raincoat and trying to make its way through the seams. She sheltered the flame on her lighter with her hand to keep it safe from the sea and from any prying eyes, then made her way up the stairs and past the giant chains that held the abomination together to get back inside.

Six froze as she passed a nook in the ship’s metalwork, illuminated by some faint ray of light trickling out of the no doubt overcast sky far above her. The mask was there, mocking her, in the form of a doll. She tried to walk past it, but something stopped her. The doll’s empty eyes seemed to follow her as she moved. Something else might be watching through the doll’s eyes, Six thought. Perhaps it was irrational, but paranoia was a blessing in the Maw, not a curse. She picked up the doll - it was porcelain, of course - and threw it against the wall.

It shattered into several pieces, with a sigh of black smoke. Six recognised the strange scent of it - it smelled of glass, and silk, and death. It was gone now, though, she told herself. She was safe.

Safe was such a relative term.

It was drier once Six slipped passed through the old boarded-up door and into what at one point must have been a living space. There was a leather couch, stuffing no doubt in some state of rotting away from the leak in the ceiling that poured onto it, and a mattress in one corner. Whomever lived here wasn’t home now, though, for the pots and pans they had used to contain the leaks had long been rendered ineffective.

Six flicked her lighter off and slid under the couch as a shadow passed in front of the porthole of the door in the back wall. The shadow paused for just a moment before moving on. Nothing was there, she told herself. A trick of the light, at most. The possibility that it was anything else was too frightening to consider.

Back into the vents she crawled. It felt safer in here, less exposed. It would be nice just to stay in here forever, she thought, but unfortunately the vents didn’t have any food. So out she went.

She felt her blood grow cold in the next room, and she didn’t know why. Her hood shielded her eyes, and she didn’t dare tempt fate and try to find the source of the chill. She stared at the ground - whatever it was, it was above her. Don’t look up.

There was a chair, she saw, and a tall door in front of her. Use the chair to reach the door, she thought. Don’t look at what’s above the chair.

She did look eventually though, as she opened the door; a careless glance that she immediately tried to revoke, but it was already too late. She saw a pair of shoes hanging in the air. She denied that she knew who the shoes belonged to. He wasn’t here, regardless. Six needed to take care of herself.

Somewhere inside, she felt a little of her light die.

##  **nitaS dna nuS :I retpahC**

The dream was pleasant; xiS rarely had unpleasant dreams. She could smell honey and sakura blossoms, and could see sunlight and the vague impression of a face. She felt a warmth that was only present in her dreams, before reality chased it away.

The room xiS woke up in was identical to countless others; tiny, but it tried to appear homey. Ancient wallpaper was glued to the walls, though much of it had peeled off in strips; the bed was dressed with a knitted blanket; a makeshift dresser sat on the other side of the room. How they could afford even this, xiS knew not. She drew her black raincoat closer around her shoulders and crept out of the door - the rooms in this area of the ship were vacated often, but they rarely stayed that way.

xiS had work to do. She’d wasted enough time here.

xiS hated the light that streamed through the Haven’s portholes. It was if whoever had designed the damned ship had put in extra ones just to torment her. The light stung her eyes and made her feel exposed. xiS tried to stay to the shadows as much as possible.

At least the air was somber; the sea air mixed with the smells of ash and death here. The wilting flowers and potpourris that had been scattered everywhere did little to mask it. The halls were quiet as well; there was a feeling of defeat that clung to the old boards that made up the walls and floors. Just like it should be.

And then she passed it - the little shrine in the alcove. It was a rough, wooden carving of a woman, with its face and only its face painted in a myriad of rainbow hues. Beneath the woman was a tiny box that a smattering of coins sat in, and a candle that smelled of sakura blossoms. xiS grinned cruelly and approached it before picking up the candle.

The woman’s face began morphing into a singed black from the flames’ touch, and xiS couldn’t help but giggle at an irony that only she and the woman whose visage she’d defaced knew. Then she took out the coins and dropped them one by one through the gaps in the floorboards before spitting on her hands and snuffing out the candle. The light died with a sigh of gold-colored smoke. It brightened xiS’ mood.

The room she entered was empty and had a special air of silence. The place was tainted with grief; she could feel it over the even brighter sunlight and the pungent smell of incense. The light seemed to glitter off of the white satin sheets that covered everything in the room. Every _ one _ , to be more precise - there was nothing in here but dead faces covered with cloth.

xiS moved past them; her task was with the living, not the dead. She could hear the sound of tears hitting the floorboards in the next room over.

“May you rest in peace,” A voice said. It was male, but thin and wispy. There was a sliding of wood, and then a splash somewhere below.

A sob escaped someone else in the room, and xiS peered through the cracked doorway. She saw two sets of shoes, attached to two sets of legs - one in old, worn heels and a black dress, the other in black pants and black dress shoes.

xiS felt her heart stop. The man’s shoes felt familiar; far too familiar. It began to make her dizzy.

“It is alright. He is in a better place now.” The man led the woman away, and the room was left empty.

xiS took a deep breath and walked inside. She hated the odor that clung to the room - it smelled of cologne and lost memories. She should go after the man, she knew, but she pushed the thought from her mind. There were bigger fish to fry, she told herself. This wasn’t really what she had come for. Ignore him.

xiS dashed behind the door as someone re-entered the room. It was the same pair of heels as before. The woman dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief as she stared out of the hole the casket had been pushed from.

She held something in her palm - a ring. She spun it around in her fingers before pulling a different ring off of her right hand and replacing it with the one she had been fiddling with. The rings now switched, she held her hand out over the ocean below.

“To remember me by,” she said, dropping the ring. The splash was too quiet to hear.

xiS felt some spark of compassion well up within her; she stomped it down immediately. There was work to be done.

But somewhere inside, a little of the light remained.


End file.
